Ask HN: Which hackers do you look up to the most?
(Hackers as in expert programmers or security researchers, not venture capitalists or anyone of that ilk.)
She wrote the first compiler which she was assured couldn't be done after already doing it, she rose to the top of a male dominated field and did it on merit, she took a leave from Vasser to join WAVES (womens volunteer corp during WWII) as a junior lieutenant, refused to retire and ended up a Read Admiral.
Ada gets a lot of respect as the 'first' female programmer but Hopper is at least as significant imo.
> The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances
The king kind of has to be Dennis Ritchie in my mind, I can't think of code that's more influential in general and definitely in my life than C and Unix.
I like Rich Hickey a lot, what he's done and judging from his talks his personality.
More obscure but this guy Fabrice Bellard is an animal, he puts out this insane amount of sophisticated code like, oh btw guys here's a fully working LTE stack.
I'd also extend my admiration for the core rails team as well. A decade plus strong, and they still make beautiful software.
It's a kind of comfort that comes with years of hacking, and the quality of their work is unmistakeable. Look at Vinay Gupta's work on Ethereum. He openly states how much he distrusts Intel and X86 and is doing public speaking to wake others up about this. Also any person working on open hardware, or Trusted platform modules are worth watching.
I'm keeping my eye on TALOS [1], but I admit I haven't had time to research it. It's just one tiny piece of the puzzle though.
Other programmers I look up to are:
Tim Berners-Lee
Linus Torvalds
John Carmack
Its impressive how such brash egoism has allowed him to monetize his hacks and general tinkering. Leaving modesty reserved for the poor and hobbyists taking up space in the garage.
Besides from his talent, I love the fact that he is still working on a project that will never be finished -TAOCP.
I look up to him as a hacker, not an academic, in the way that hackers scratch an itch and write something cool. His itch was typesetting, so he just nonchalantly created tex. Using a methodology (literate programming) he created to scratch a previous itch.
Plus he likes to compose music (great hackers hack across domains)
Jim Butterfield: The very first programmer I looked up to. I learned a lot reading his code.
Michael Tischer: PC Intern author. That book was very influential for me. I have this crazy drive to know how things work and that book explained a lot to me.
Michael Abrash: My assembly language skills owed[0] a lot to his writing.
John Carmack: How could he not be on anyone's list?
[0] Past tense; I don't write anything in assembly anymore.
If you're reading this and you haven't read Levy's "Hackers", stop reading this and do so.
Also Brendan Gregg. He's really good at what he does, he clearly loves doing it, and everything he learns about doing it he tells everyone else as fast as he can. He's a demonstration of the hacker ethic.
Bjarne Stroustrup
Dennis Ritchie
Rob Pike
Alan Kay
Alan Cox
Linus Torvalds
Margaret Hamilton
Kevin Mitnick
Richard Stallman
Paul Graham
Robert T. Morris
Here is a video where he demonstrates how to open garage doors with a wireless Mattel toy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSSRaIU9_Vc
He also wrote that one XSS worm for myspace several years ago. Hi Samy, in case you happen to read this ;)
J.C.R. LickLider
Vannevar Bush
It's worth going back and reading what they wrote/said. Every hacker should know these names.
terminals, version control, NTP... all ugly old things that MUST WORK